The Twilight Inn Blues
by Restless Joy
Summary: Worn out from days on the trail, the three Cartwright sons take shelter in a deserted town called Twilight. As the night wears on, they discover it’s not so deserted after all.


Title: The Twilight Inn Blues

Author: Spril

Rating: M for graphic imagery…mostly just to be safe.

Summary: Worn out from days on the trail, the three Cartwright sons take shelter in a deserted town called Twilight. As the night wears on, they discover it's not so deserted after all…R&R please!

Author's Notes: My first Bonanza fanfic – it started out as an school project and ran from there. The name for the town, Twilight, as you probably guessed, is an allusion to the season 5 episode "Twilight Town."

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The sun had barely finished setting over the horizon as the three men rode into town, leaving nothing but an eerie green glow from the clouds above. This did nothing for the small one-horse town of Twilight, which looked to the men as if it was deserted. Only one light shone out in the darkness. It was a lantern, hanging outside what the swaying sign described to be an inn. The place didn't look like much, but they'd been riding for days and a warm bed was too tempting to turn down.

"I don't think I like the look of this place, Joe." One of the men, Hoss, told his brother gruffly.

"You aren't scared, are you?" Joe teased, one of the few people who knew how Hoss' size belayed his personality. Hoss grunted in response, glaring, but left it at that.

"I think I agree. The sooner we get out of here tomorrow, the better." The eldest brother, Adam, said.

"Yeah, but I wouldn't pass up a real bed for anything tonight!" Joe shook his head, grinning at the thought of a good night's sleep.

"I don't know, Joe, something just doesn't seem right." Hoss mirrored Joe's shake of the head, but with a different attitude to the gesture. He walked through the doors of the inn ahead of the other two, and they shared a knowing grin. Turning back to face forwards, Adam abruptly came to a halt and Joe collided with him.

"Hey, what's the big idea?" Joe demanded with his hands on his hips, looking for all the world like an indignant adolescent. He glared up at Adam, shortly realizing that the older man hadn't spared him a glance and was staring wide-eyed past Hoss' large shoulders into the inn beyond. Joe followed suit and soon echoed his brother's expression.

The place had obviously been deserted for some time. Dust coated every surface, and spider webs hung from the sagging ceiling. The walls and ceiling were stained and slowly dripping into puddles on the dusty floor. The only piece of furniture in the room was a large desk, which they could see was black, charred and at the point of crumbling underneath its layer of dust. The floor around it, however, had not been touched by flames. On the desk, exactly in the center, was a single burning candle.

"Well…this sure is strange." Said Joe, swallowing. Hoss nodded wordlessly. Adam, recovering more quickly than the other two, stepped around Hoss and walked slowly to the desk, gazing intently at the candle.

"The dust around it hasn't been disturbed," he said, flicking his dark eyes towards the others for a moment. He ran a finger down the length of the candle itself, his eyebrows knitting in confusion when the appendage came away dusty. "It doesn't appear as though anyone lit this candle."

"How could that be, Adam?" Hoss asked after he found his voice. "How'd it get lit if nobody lit it?"

Logic, for once, failed Adam, and he was left with nothing else to do but sigh. "I don't know."

"Well, I think it's downright creepy. I don't reckon on spendin' the night here, no matter _how_ sore I am." Hoss said resolutely, crossing his arms and setting his jaw.

"Now wait a minute, Hoss, it isn't _that_ bad…" Joe started, but he found it hard to agree with himself after taking another look around. Those stains on the walls and ceiling were awful mysterious…still, he'd been so looking forward to a real bed. Two heads turned inevitably to Adam, usually the voice of reason in the trio. He sighed again and raised his eyes to the ceiling as if asking, 'Why me?'

"Maybe we should stay here. They likely still have beds, and that's all we really need. There's nothing to worry about."

Joe turned to Hoss, a decidedly self-satisfied look on his face, and the big man could have sworn his little brother was about to stick his tongue out. In fact it was on Joe's mind, and he very nearly did it, until he remembered that he was approaching twenty-two years of age instead of five.

The three brothers cautiously walked up the stairs to the upper level of the inn. The only strange thing there was that there was nothing strange about it. There was no inch-high layer of dust, no mysteriously burning candles, no stains on the walls or ceiling. Joe took this as a good sign, and the ever-present bounce in his step returned as they headed towards the first door on the right. Adam reached it first, and Hoss and Joe stood behind him. They took a deep breath in unison as Adam ("Oh, this is _ridiculous,_") slowly opened the door. He poked his head in to look around first, then let out a relieved sigh. The room looked just as any other room would, in any other inn.

"You see, Hoss, there really was nothing to be worried about! Everything's perfectly fine." Joe said, that self-satisfied smile back in place. Hoss scowled at him and sat down on the bed, while his brothers winced at the loud _squeak _it made.

"Yeah, well, I still got an _awful _bad feelin' about this."

"Don't worry, Hoss, I'm sure big brother Adam won't mind if you crawl into bed with him. It'll be just like old times, when you were just the biggest little kid anybody ever saw." Joe teased, pushing his limits, and danced out of the way when Hoss made a playful grab for him. Adam rolled his eyes, but let the faintest smile grace his lips – at least Hoss had momentarily forgotten his bad feeling.

"Well, I think we all oughta get to bed now." Adam said, giving both his brothers the raised eyebrow of doom before heading out to find his own room. Joe grinned cheekily at Hoss before doing the same, and Hoss glared after him for a moment before settling down on top of the bed, clothes and boots still on.

It was many hours later, the sun having long disappeared from the cloudy sky, when something woke Hoss with a start. He bolted upright, looking around wildly for a minute before deciding there was nothing there. The big man sighed, realizing the slim chance of going back to sleep before morning. He got up and paced the length of the room for a few minutes, and then opened the door and walked down into the foyer. Once in the room, he couldn't quite figure out why he had come down there in the first place, as it was obviously the eeriest place in the entire inn.

Hoss aimed an apprehensive glance at the charred table in the center of the room. The candle on top was still burning, and he could see not a drop of wax had melted. He turned to go back up the stairs and was suddenly faced with a body. Hoss scrambled backwards, running into the wall as he stared. The man was slightly transparent, but every detail could be clearly seen. He was hanging from the chandelier, his face a ghostly blue, and his neck was bruised purple and black around the rope. His legs were charred and crumbling, just like the table his toes were barely touching.

He opened his mouth, releasing a steady stream of smoke and a hoarse, ungodly scream. Hoss was trying to find a way to escape when the ghostly man disappeared, just as quickly as he had come. Hoss ran back upstairs and burst into Joe's room, slamming the door behind him and then throwing his full weight against it just to make sure no one could push their way in. Joe woke suddenly, reached up to rub his eyes, and then squinted at Hoss in the dark, trying to figure out why his sleep had so rudely been interrupted.

"Joe, did you hear it? Did you hear it, Joe?" Hoss asked, his voice high and tinged with panic.

"Hear _what_, Hoss?" Joe asked back irritably.

"That – that awful – that _scream_, Joe, how could you sleep through such a dadburned noise?" Hoss was now demanding, his fear turning into frustration.

"I slept through it because I was _tired_, Hoss, now will you let me go back to sleep?"

Hoss was just about to answer his little brother when the hanged man appeared, the rope hanging from nothing. Joe's mouth dropped open the same time as the ghost's, who let out that same horrible scream and then disappeared again. The scream echoed through the room.

"Do you believe me _now_?" Hoss said, and his only answer was Joe grabbing his boots, jacket and gunbelt and running out of the room. The two youngest Cartwrights burst into Adam's room the same way Hoss had Joe's, and Joe immediately sat down next to Adam to pull his boots on. This jostled Adam awake.

"What are you two doing in here?" he groaned.

"We've got to go, Adam, we've got to go _right _now!" Joe exclaimed, finishing with his boots and jumping up to fasten his gunbelt. Adam sighed.

"And why is that, exactly?"

As if to answer his question, the hanged man appeared and once again let loose his scream and then vanished. Adam's eyes widened, and he made an undignified scramble for his things.

"You see?" shouted Hoss.

"There's got to be a better time for I-told-you-sos," Adam grumbled. The three brothers hurried out of the room, running into the hanged man again. He screamed. They ran full tilt out of the inn, the apparition's scream following them all the way. They skidded to a stop beside the hitching post, barely noticing that the sun was rising behind them. Joe glanced back at the inn, and promptly froze.

The building they had seen the night before was gone, somehow replaced by blackened ruins. The entire upper level of the building had disappeared and the lower level hung open, gutted, the walls reaching up towards the lightening sky as if trying to climb up to it.

"Hey – how – what – what's going _on_?" he asked helplessly, throwing his hands in a wide, frustrated arc. Adam and Hoss stopped their mad dash and simply stared at the remains of the inn in complete and utter bewilderment.

A moment passed, and then Hoss crossed his arms and turned to his brothers.

"No reason to be _worried_, right boys?"

Adam looked at him, his apology written all over his face, while Joe just looked like he was going to be sick.

"We'll never doubt your instincts again, Hoss," Adam said, "Now can we get out of here?"

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